Experiments suggest that there are consequences to our actions that transcend our ordinary, classical way of thinking. Emerson was right: “Every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.”

I remember a warm night in the summer, sitting out fishing in the pond. Now and then I could feel the vibrations along the line linking me with the life prowling about the bottom. At length I pulled some bass, squeaking and gasping into the air. It was an epistemological puzzle to feel a tug, and to be conscious at the same time of a part of me that, as it were, wasn’t a part of me, but scale and fin, circling the hook, slow to strike.

Surely this is what Spinoza meant when he contended that consciousness can’t exist simply in space and time, and at the same time is aware of the interrelations of all parts of space and time. In order to have knowledge of a pout or a pickerel, I must have somehow been identical with them.

How can this be, you ask? How is it managed, that for real experiments with electrons, that a single particle can be at two places at once? See the loon in the pond or the North Star? How deceptive is the space that separates them and makes them solitary. Aren’t they the subjects of the same reality that interested John Bell, the physicist who proposed the experiment that once and for all answered the question of whether what happens locally is affected by nonlocal events?

Experiments from 1997 to 2007 have shown that this is indeed the case; in one recent study, entangled particles were sent zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart. But whatever action they took, the communication between them happened instantaneously (faster than the speed of light). This is what Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” Today no one doubts the connectedness between bits of light or matter, or even entire clusters of atoms. They’re intimately linked in a manner suggesting there’s no space between them, and no time influencing their behavior.

Everything you experience is a whirl of information occurring in your head; according to Biocentrism, space and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting it all together. However solid and real the walls of space and time have come to look, there is a part of us that is no more human than it is animal – even the fish, sporting there in the pond, a part of us unwittingly tempted by a bunch of worms strung on a thread.

As parts of such a whole there is natural justice. The bird and the prey are one. This was the world that confronted me there by the pond that warm summer night. “Lanza and the modern anthropics,” a respondent once wrote, “like to imagine humans in the place of Berkeley’s God, using some smart quantum theory to bolster their opinions” (New Scientist, Feb 23, 1991). We’re sure we’re not connected to the fish in the pond, for they have scales and fin and we don’t have any.

The situation is not unlike the one Alice found herself in Wonderland. “‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar. Alice replied, “I—I hardly know, Sir… ‘Who in the World am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle! …‘I’m sure I’m not Ada,’ she said, ‘For her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little. Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is!”

“Non-separability,” Bernard d’Espagnat said, “is now one of the most certain general concepts in physics.” There’s a part of us that’s connected to the fish in the pond. It’s the part that experiences consciousness, not in our external embodiments but in our inner being. We can only imagine and recollect things while in the body, for sensations and memories are molded into knowledge and thought in the brain. And although we identify ourselves with our thoughts and affections, it’s an essential feature of reality that we experience the world piece by piece, as, for instances, each of the fish that I caught that summer.

We think there’s an enclosing wall, a circumference to us. We suppose ourselves to be a pond; and if there’s any consequence to our actions, if there’s any justice, it must approach upon these shores. Yet that night, I sensed the union that the one man and creature has with the other. The fish and I, the criminal and the victim, are one and the same. Justice is built into the fabric of nature. Make no mistake about it: it’ll be you who looks out the eyes of the victim or the recipient of kindness — whichever you choose. Nature’s justice is inescapable and absolute.

This is therefore the indispensable prelude to justice, and its highest form; we’re forced to recall the words of John Donne, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Science is just beginning to grasp the non-linear dimensionality of nature. Heinz Pagels, the esteemed physicist, once stated: “If you deny the objectivity of the world, unless you observe it and are conscious of it (as most physicists have), then you end up with solipsism – the belief that your consciousness is the only one.”

This may not unsettle you, except perhaps on a warm moonlit night with a fish gasping for life at the end of your rod. I knew then, at that moment, that Pagel’s conclusion was right. Only it wasn’t my consciousness that was the only one, it was ours. According to biocentrism, our individual separateness is an illusion.

There’s no doubt; that consciousness which was behind the youth I once was, was also behind the mind of every animal and person existing in space and time. “There are,” wrote Loren Eiseley, noted anthropologist, “very few youths today who will pause, coming from a biology class, to finger a yellow flower or poke in friendly fashion at a sunning turtle on the edge of the campus pond, and who are capable of saying to themselves, ‘We are all one – all melted together.’”

Clearly, all life can be traced back to some single-celled organism in the early Archean sea. We’re all interrelated, part of single absolute being.

Yes, I thought, we are all one. I let the fish go. With a thrash of the tail, I disappeared into the pond.

Lanza's Paper is the Cover Story of Annalen der Physik, which Published Einstein's Theories of Relativity

In his papers on relativity, Einstein showed that time was relative to the observer. This new paper takes this one step further, arguing that the observer creates it. The paper shows that the intrinsic properties of quantum gravity and matter alone cannot explain the tremendous effectiveness of the emergence of time and the lack of quantum entanglement in our everyday world. Instead, it’s necessary to include the properties of the observer, and in particular, the way we process and remember information.

The quest to unify all of physics into a “the theory of everything” has inspired a host of ideas. Now a pioneer in the field of stem cell research has weighed in with an essay that brings biology and consciousness into the mix.

Lanza featured on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC’s) Ideas, one of the oldest and most respected radio programs in the world

BEYOND BIOCENTRISM: Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of DeathHost Paul Kennedy has his understanding of reality turned-upside-down by Dr. Robert Lanza in this paradigm-shifting hour. Dr. Lanza provides a compelling argument for consciousness as the basis for the universe, rather than consciousness simply being its by-product.

Reception to Biocentrism by Scientists & Scholars

“… Robert Lanza’s work is a wake-up call to all of us”—David Thompson, Astrophysicist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

“The heart of [biocentrism], collectively, is correct…So what Lanza says in this book is not new. Then why does Robert have to say it at all? It is because we, the physicists, do NOT say it–or if we do say it, we only whisper it, and in private–furiously blushing as we mouth the words. True, yes; politically correct, hell no! Bless Robert Lanza for creating this book, and bless Bob Berman for not dissuading friend Robert from going ahead with it…Lanza’s remarkable personal story is woven into the book, and is uplifting. You should enjoy this book, and it should help you on your personal journey to understanding.”—Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University

“It is genuinely an exciting piece of work…and coheres with some of the things biology and neuroscience are telling us about the structures of our being. Just as we now know that the sun doesn’t really move but we do (we are the active agents), so it is suggesting that we are the entities that give meaning to the particular configuration of all possible outcomes we call reality.”—Ronald Green, Eunice & Julian Cohen Professor and Director, Ethics Institute, Dartmouth College

“[Biocentrism] takes into account all the knowledge we have gained over the last few centuries…placing in perspective our biologic limitations that have impeded our understanding of greater truths surrounding our existence and the universe around us. This new theory is certain to revolutionize our concepts of the laws of nature for centuries to come.”—Anthony Atala, renowned scientist, W.H. Boyce Professor, Chair, and Director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

“Having interviewed some of the most brilliant minds in the scientific world, I found Dr. Robert Lanza’s insights into the nature of consciousness original and exciting. His theory of biocentrism is consistent with the most ancient traditions of the world which say that consciousness conceives, governs, and becomes a physical world.”—Deepak Chopra, Bestselling Author, one of the top heroes and icons of the century

“It’s a masterpiece…combines a deep understanding and broad insight into 20th century physics and modern biological science; in so doing, he forces a reappraisal of this hoary epistemological dilemma…Bravo”—Michael Lysaght, Professor and Director, Center for Biomedical Engineering, Brown University

“Now that I have spent a fair amount of time the last few months doing a bit of writing, reading and thinking about this, and enjoying it and watching it come into better focus, And as I go deeper into my Zen practice, And as I am about half way through re-reading Biocentrism, My conclusion about the book Biocentrism is: Holy shit, that’s a really great book!—Ralph Levinson, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

From physicist Scott M. Tyson’s bookThe Unobservable Universe

“I downloaded a digital copy of [Biocentrism] in the privacy of my home, where no one could observe my buying or reading such a “New Agey” sort of cosmology book. Now, mind you, my motivation was not all that pure. It was my intention to read the book so I could more effectively refute it like a dedicated physicist was expected to. I consider myself to be firmly and exclusively entrenched in the cosmology camp embodied by the likes of Stephen Hawking, Lisa Randall, Brain Greene, and Edward Witten. After all, you know what Julius Caesar said: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” I needed to know what the other camps were thinking so I could better defend my position. It became necessary to penetrate the biocentrism camp.

The book had the completely opposite effect on me. The views that Dr. Lanza presented in this book changed my thinking in ways from which there could never be retreat. Before I had actually finished reading the book, it was abundantly obvious to me that Dr. Lanza’s writings provided me with the pieces of perspective that I had been desperately seeking. Everything I had learned and everything I thought I knew just exploded in my mind and, as possibilities first erupted and then settled down, a completely new understanding emerged. The information I had accumulated in my mind hadn’t changed, but the way I viewed it did— in a really big way.”

I spent a couple of years rolling pennies and eating canned spinach and pasta while I tried to understand the universe.

U.S. News & World Report Cover Story

“…his mentors described him [Lanza] as a “genius,” a “renegade” thinker, even likening him to Einstein.”

“Robert Lanza is the living embodiment of the character played by Matt Damon in the movie Good Will Hunting. Growing up underprivileged in Stoughton, Mass., south of Boston, the young preteen caught the attention of Harvard Medical School researchers when he showed up on the university steps having successfully altered the genetics of chickens in his basement. Over the next decade, he was to be “discovered” and taken under the wing of scientific giants such as psychologist B. F. Skinner, immunologist Jonas Salk, and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. His mentors described him as a “genius,” a “renegade” thinker, even likening him to Einstein.”

We’re taught that the universe can be fundamentally divided into two entities: ourselves and that which is outside of us. But you’re not an object — if you divorce one side of the equation from the other you cease to exist.

New experiments suggest part of us exists outside of the physical world. We assume there’s a universe “out there” separate from what we are, and that we play no role in its appearance. Yet experiments show just the opposite.

Ideally, our concepts of nature and God should adapt to our evolving scientific knowledge. Relative to the supreme creator, we humans would be much like the microorganisms we scrutinize under the microscope.

Biocentrism unlocks the cage Western science has unwittingly confined itself. By allowing the observer into the equation opens new approaches to understanding everything from the tiny world of the atom to our views of life and death.

We take physics as a kind of magic and think everything just popped into existence one day out of nothingness. But we’re living through a profound shift in worldview, from the belief that life is an insignificant part of the physical universe, to one in which we’re the origin.

We’re about to be broadsided by the most explosive event in history. But it won’t be rockets that take us the next step. Sometime in the future science life will finally figure out how to escape from its corporeal cage.

Everyone knows that something is screwy with the way we visualize the cosmos. Theories of its origins screech to a halt when they reach the very event of interest — the moment of creation, the “Big Bang.”

If we could see before the first single-cell organism, and after the last man and woman, only you would remain — you, the Great Face behind, that consciousness whose mode of thinking that contains the world.

We think of time and consciousness in human terms. But like us, plants possess receptors, microtubules and sophisticated intercellular systems that likely facilitate a degree of spatio-temporal consciousness.

Did you ever wonder why people like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson didn’t fare any better than you or I despite all their money, fame, and access to people of wisdom? The answer lies in your own backyard.

It seems natural that someday we’ll make machines that’ll think and act like people. However, for a machine or computer there’s no other principle but physic, and the chemistry of the atoms that compose it.